The One Waste that’s Killing Your Company

If this ‘waste’ isn’t killing your company, it’s slowing it down more than you may realize…even if you’re growing. Most of you have heard about the Seven Traditional Wastes as identified by Lean Methodology. But this one killer waste is more pernicious and prevalent: the use of wrong metrics.

Too many corporate dysfunctions have been created through the use of Efficiency. It drives all sorts of internal-looking, suboptimal actions and decisions that the customers become dissatisfied and the organization lacks alignment and misses creating the overall optimal success for the whole team. Similarly EBITDA and ROI have been great for the short-term but not the long-term success. Even tactical measurements like On-Time Delivery have driven wasteful spending on expedited freight, overtime and excess staffing, excess inventory and so on. There are many more examples.

How many of your metrics are customer-centered? How many are measuring the effectiveness of the organization as a whole, rather than just one part? How many are measuring activity but not results and, worse, measuring activity that doesn’t drive the needed results but the unnecessary results?

We’ve helped companies and non-profits measure the right things that lead to accelerated growth.